New MacArthur 'Genius' Award: A Pay Raise

This Year's Crop of Fellows—Including Scientists and Artists—to Get $625,000

The winners of this year's MacArthur genius grants range from a chemist devising new ways to synthesize natural products to a choreographer exploring the relationship between identity and personal history. See interview excerpts with some of the 2013 fellows.

By

Caroline Porter

Sept. 25, 2013 12:02 a.m. ET

The value of a being a genius just went up.

This year's crop of MacArthur Fellows—including a neuroscientist working to restore vision in blind people, a pianist modernizing classical music and a physicist preserving rare sounds—will receive $625,000 over the next five years, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation said Wednesday.

The 2013 MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Winners

That's a bump up from the $500,000 for previous recipients of the annual recognition of creativity, commonly called "genius grants." The foundation, which doesn't support the nickname, uses an anonymous review process to select each year's batch of winners and maintains a "no-strings-attached" policy to allow fellows to pursue their passions. This year marks the first stipend increase since 2000.

"Winning this—it's not just for me. It allows me to help blind people," said Sheila Nirenberg, a neuroscientist at Cornell University who has developed a prosthetic device to translate images into meaningful electrical pulses and transmit them into the brains of blind mice, allowing them to see.

Ms. Nirenberg, who plans to use the funding for further research, hopes to apply her findings to humans with retinal degenerative diseases, such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, which affect about 10 million people in the U.S. "This is a huge pay-it-forward thing," she said.

Other winners include Carrie Mae Weems, a photographer and video artist; Phil Baran, an organic chemist and inventor; and Alexei Ratmansky, a choreographer with the American Ballet Theatre.

Since the fellowship began in 1981, nearly 900 people have won the award. This year's class of 24 individuals ranges in age from 32 to 60 and spans a variety of subjects, such as immigration law for military families, the use of brain functions in behavioral economics and the choreography of postmodern dance.

"I had to immediately walk outside because I was thinking, 'The ceiling is too low for this feeling,' " said Karen Russell, author of "Swamplandia!", a novel about alligator wrestlers in the Everglades, referring to the foundation's phone call a few weeks ago to notify her that she had won this year.

This August, the foundation released results from a survey of fellows and the broader public that underscored the benefits of the program. Most fellows—88%—reported increased opportunity to express creativity and advancement toward personal goals, while 24% of the public said the awards caused them "to pause and consider their [own] work and contributions to society."

Yet 8% of fellows also reported negative impact on their personal activities or time with family. The instant notoriety of the MacArthur awards can be jolting to some winners, especially those like Marla Spivak, an entomologist studying bees at the University of Minnesota and MacArthur winner in 2010.

"Being on a big stage felt a little bit like the ' Ed Sullivan Show'," Ms. Spivak said. "But I'm glad to have the opportunity to do something to help bees." She has used the funding to start a "Bee Squad" program to teach bee education in the community and to fund more research.

Cecilia Conrad, vice president of the MacArthur Fellows Program, said the foundation is brainstorming ideas on new programs, such as pairing alumni with new fellows, to support winners as they make the transition to their newfound fame.

"The program has a philosophy that when you have identified people who have shown not only creativity but persistence and strong work ethic…you actually can have more impact by giving them autonomy and trust," she said. "People take that trust and view it as something sacred that they need to work with."

Kyle Abraham, a choreographer and dancer and 2013 fellow, says the award will allow him to pay off student loans and help facilitate health-care coverage for members of his dance company. "A lot of constant worries that I've had will be alleviated," he said.

For Jeremy Denk, a classical pianist and writer, the award will offer the bandwidth to practice more and to brainstorm on larger music projects.

"It feels like a little bit of a responsibility," said the 2013 fellow. "I'm asking myself, 'How can I best broaden the reach of what I do to impact the most people?' "

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